Door To The Third World
by Dearest's Historic Cadre
Summary: Talking to monsters in your closet is all well and good when you're two, but not so when you're fourteen. At that age, real life is hard enough to deal with without monsters. This is a contemplation of what must be going on in Boo's mind.
1. strange girl

Everyone thought there was something strange about her. She moved awkwardly and heavily, like a girl carrying a secret world on her shoulders. She had round, childish features and thin black air that wafted dreamily across her white, crescent-moon forehead. Undoubtedly an adorable child, her features now looked strange and out of place on a young teenager's grimace.

She'd never had a date. She'd never been kissed. She didn't have many friends, and what few she did were considered to be even stranger than her. She'd never even had any pets. She displayed a minor talent for mathematics and design & tech, but in science exams she would absentmindedly correct the questions and her handwriting was appalling in any case.

Every night (unbeknownst to anyone else- after all, she never had any girly sleepovers, or any forms or variant on sleepovers whatsoever), she waited patiently by her closet door until about midnight. Sometimes she'd wait all night fruitlessly and climb into sleep with a sigh, and dream fitfully of a city with a thousand technicolour phantoms haunting the curious streets. Some nights she'd fall asleep waiting, and never see the enormous apparition that appeared in the doorway- though she'd always wake up to find herself tucked tenderly between her bed sheets with her fine hair clinging to her forehead, as if a heavy paw had been stroking it. Sometimes her parents would come in and force her into bed with more and more reprimands.

But sometimes...


	2. funny little paw

"Hey kid, nice haircut."

Boo grinned. She never grinned on the other side of the door. "I haven't had a haircut, Mike."

"Yeah, that's what I mean." Mike pulled her fringe affectionately. "Sort it out! If I had a pair of eyes like yours, I wouldn't be hiding them. Come to that, if I had a pair of eyes..."

"You look fine," Sully said, and gave her a quiet smile. "How've you been?"

"Same old," Boo said falling into step with them. They were walking down the high street to where Mike had (illegally) parked his newest car. He had promised her a ride some fortnight ago and she hadn't seen her friends since. "Same old," she repeated, but looked a little sad.

Sully saw it too. He'd been seeing it since Boo had reached the age of thirteen. But what can you expect? That is what puberty is for, if you ignore the purely biological happenstances- you scrape away your innocence, you dig a hole inside of yourself, you create a secret world in your soul, a private life of fantasies, avarice and the famous Freudian slip, and you have a place where you can be as much pig or saint as you like, accountable to nobody.

Sully, of course, thought, 'She's growing up.' But if he had been as overly verbose as all that, and of course a human, so that he knew who Freud was, he undoubtedly would have thought this.

"How's Celia?" Boo was asking Mike in the meanwhile.

"Moving in with her was the best thing I ever did, except maybe get born," Mike said, happily. "Cooked dinners! Proper ones! Every night! And of course-"

"Mike..." muttered Sully uncomfortably.

"-she's great... conversation...?" Mike finished, then smirked and nudged Boo, who giggled and went a funny shade of pink. Definitely, definitely growing up.

Sully sighed. "Sure, if you're of great conversation is simpering baby noises. I guess you haven't yet progressed to the art of sentence-forming..."

"Good evening, Mr Director General!" some miscellaneous monster called to Sully. He gave them a pleasant smile and a nonchalant wave- at least, with the hand that wasn't holding Boo's.

"That's Mr Director General _Sir_!" roared Mike, insofar as a small green lump of indignation can roar. "And his stately and majestic entourage!"

_And how long will I be allowed to hold her hand before she realises she's not a little girl? Or worse, that I'm not just a human in a fuzzy monster suit?_ Or at least he would have thought that, if he wasn't thinking, 'Funny little paw. Where shall I take her and her funny little paw to dinner? Maybe sushi. She never gets tired of the sushi story. Or how about Kzntvcki Fried Membrane and a late night double-feature picture show?'

Don't make the mistake of thinking of Sully as stupid. It takes a creature cleverer than most to block out subconscious mental snide remarks because they care enough about someone else. Not even Romeo and Juliet managed that. Mothers struggle once their offspring start answering back. Sully was very, very clever indeed.


	3. randall?

She was a strange, quiet, inward-turning girl, but her eyes were the colour of curious sights. It was anyone's guess why she had shadows under her eyes that said, 'I live', when her demeanour said, 'I sit in my room by myself and dream about living'.

It was when the shadows caught the angles of her face in such a way that she suddenly looked... _womanly..._ that monsters and humans alike wondered about her. Because she had a world of magical, mundane strangeness inside of herself, the preserve of every creature past a certain age, accountable to nobody.

Here is an interesting fact about A-level history coursework. Every year, _someone_ wants to do their coursework under the title, Who Was Jack the Ripper! And the overwhelming majority of these are girls in all-girls schools.

Here is an interesting line from Sylvia Plath's poem, _Daddy_, "Every woman adores a fascist// the boot in the face, the brute / brute heart of a brute like you."

We don't want to spell it out. But we may have to.

She thought, in her secret way, when she was a mound under the bedclothes made of hot limbs and hot breath and a thoughtful, overheating mind, on nights when Sully didn't open the door and pull her through the only portal to ever leave the factory floor and take up permanent residence in Sully's bachelor flat, on nights when she realised with twisting shock she couldn't be the little girl who talked to monsters who lived in her closet all her life, she thought... 'Whatever became of the one they called Randall?'

She doesn't remember very clearly- what fourteen year old can or will tell you lucidly about a few consecutive days when they were two? All she can remember is the rush of fear and adrenalin his name makes her feel, the vague recollection of strong fingers holding her, the awe and horror which followed in his sinuous wake. Oh yes, and she remember how he moved- like a sliver of nightmare through grey darkness.

She is too young to understand what obsession is, except in purely dictionary terms.

She is too young to comprehend love, too, particularly because she takes it for granted, without even realising.


End file.
